Which airlines let you convert their miles into Accor Live Limitless hotel points?

Once upon a time, it was not unusual for airlines to offer transfer options out of their frequent flyer miles and into hotel schemes.

Over the years this changed, creating a pyramid of sorts with the airlines at the top:

• Hertz would let you transfer into hotel and airline schemes (although this was pulled following the pandemic)

• hotel schemes would let you transfer into airline schemes, but not car schemes

• airlines schemes wouldn’t let you transfer to anyone

There are some exceptions. In the UK, Virgin Atlantic lets you transfer into Hilton Honors and IHG One Rewards.

That’s about it. Or, at least, it was.

Accor has been striking multiple airline deals

Accor Live Limitless is the loyalty scheme for Novotel, ibis, Raffles, Swissotel, Mercure, Sofitel, Fairmont etc.

You can learn more on the Accor website here.

In recent years, Accor has been working hard to agree two-way transfer deals with airlines. As well as the industry-standard ‘transfer out’ option, Accor also allows many airline miles to be transferred IN.

This isn’t as great as it sounds

The one snag is that Accor Live Limitless has revenue-based redemptions. In plain English, each point is worth 2 Eurocents.

It doesn’t matter if you want New York on New Year’s Eve or a wet January Wednesday in Walsall, you get 2 Eurocents per point. There is NO opportunity for arbitrage, unless you redeem for tickets for a VIP Accor Experiences event which can be good value.

Fixed value means that a transfer into Accor is a bad deal, because it puts a firm – low – value on your airline miles.

However, this is not always an issue. If you have 2,000 Aegean Miles+Bonus miles, you can’t do much with them. Move them into 500 Accor Live Limitless points and they are good for €10 off a room (albeit you need to redeem in chunks of €20) or to be transferred into Avios in Iberia Club when you hit the minimum threshold.

You can now convert Avios to Accor Live Limitless points

When Qatar Airways Privilege Club changed its loyalty currency to Avios in 2022, it opened up the opportunity to transfer Avios to Accor points.

We looked at Avios to Accor transfers here. Assuming that you value an Avios at 1p, you would be sacrificing £45 of Avios for €20 of Accor hotel credit, which is clearly not great.

It WOULD stop your Accor Live Limitless points expiring, however, which is always a risk because you need to earn points every 12 months to keep them alive.

Which airlines are Accor Live Limitless partners?

Because Accor has been rolling out these deals so quickly, you might not realise that it is now working with an airline where you have a handful of useless miles.

Below you will find the current Accor ‘transfer in’ airline partners.

Full details are on this page of the Accor website – make sure you are on the ‘Earn’ tab of the airlines page.

• Aegean Miles+ Bonus: 2,000 miles = 500 Accor points

• Azul Fidelidade: 10,000 Azul points = 1,000 Accor points

• Emirates Skywards: 4,000 Skywards miles = 1,000 Accor points

• Finnair Plus: 2,300 Avios = 500 Accor points (so Qatar Airways, see below, is better value)

• Flying Blue: 4,000 miles = 1,000 Accor points

• ITA Airways Volare: 4,000 points = 1,000 Accor points

• Japan Airlines: 5,000 miles = 1,000 Accor points, 10,000 miles = 4,000 Accor points

• Juneyao Air: 200 points = 800 Accor points

• LATAM Pass Brazil: 5,680 miles = 1,000 Accor points

• Qatar Airways: 4,500 Avios = 1,000 Accor points

• Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer: 4,500 KrisFlyer miles = 1,000 Accor points

• Smiles: 8,000 Smiles miles = 1,000 Reward points

Plus, on the trains side:

• Club Eurostar: 500 points = 1,000 Accor points

Conclusion

If you have enough airline miles for a free flight in any of the above schemes (or Eurostar points for a free trip) then it is likely that you will lose value by moving them to Accor Live Limitless.

However, if you have a small amount of orphaned miles in any of the schemes above, a transfer to Accor is a great way of getting some value from them. I have done this myself with some orphaned Aegean miles.

You can learn more on the airlines page of Accor Live Limitless here.